Welcome To
The Bottom Line

In mid-March, when Americans were beginning to absorb the notion of shelter-in-place orders, SRM reached out to our financial institution clients to get a snapshot of their mindset regarding approaches to meeting consumer needs in the age of the pandemic. The findings of that initial survey can be found here. 

To refresh this view and learn how time in the “now normal” was impacting banks and credit unions, a second survey was planned in late June. Of course, by the time the second survey was ready to go into the field, COVID-19 was re-asserting itself across the United States. We retooled the study to accommodate the circumstances, revisiting some of the questions from the March survey and drilling down into digital transformation and payments.  

Given the whirlwind of recent events, it seems like ages since January, when one of our payments experts Larry Pruss weighed in on Visa’s acquisition of Plaid, API aggregator for P2P players such as Venmo. He discussed what this combination could mean for banks and credit unions going forward, reinforcing two key points:  

1. Financial institutions are hungry for objective expert opinions on market developments; and 
2. The strategic moves of major industry vendors – not just their direct competitors – can have a major impact on their competitive position.     

Delinquencies & Defaults Brewing on the Horizon 

Despite the many uncertainties in our “now” normal, Covid-19 is undeniably changing consumer spending patterns – and it shows. According to its 8-K filing from June 1, which compares May 2019 to May 2020 payment volumes, Visa’s cardholder spend in categories like travel, entertainment, fuel and restaurants had 20-40%+ declines year-over-year, while spend in categories such as groceries, home improvement, retail sales and telecom/utilities grew 20-40% for the same period.